


It Came From The Strawberry Patch

by cthchewy (pyrrhic_victoly)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Grubs (Homestuck), Tiny!Trolls, fuck yeah stephen hawking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 04:38:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7299892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victoly/pseuds/cthchewy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Communicating with tiny alien invaders: a study by NASA xenolinguist Dave Strider</p><p>An alternate POV to the events of "It Came From The Tomato Patch".</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Came From The Strawberry Patch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RainofLittleFishes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Odds & Ends: Homestuck drabbles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2613368) by [RainofLittleFishes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes). 



You visit Jade after a long day at work. She serves you shitty Budweiser and organic garden weed salad - “Dandelions and garlic mustard!” - while joking about making beer-battered slug fritters.

...You think she’s joking.

...You _hope_ she’s joking.

“What?” Jade asks when you give her a concerned look. “Slugs are edible! You just have to cook them well enough to kill off possible brain-eating parasites.”

Bec gives a happy bark as if in agreement with his master, to which Jade beams proudly.

 _Brain-eating parasites_ , she says. Wow. Your friends are such weirdos.

You still love her though, because you’re not the most normal person either, but Jade puts up with your shit regardless. Somehow you end up shoving two potted plants into the back seat of your beat-up sedan “to brighten up your apartment”.

“My apartment is plenty bright,” you tell her. “I can’t even step out onto my balcony anymore. It is literally a jungle out there with all the plants you’ve given me. I stepped out the other day to get some air, and I freaked out because I thought I’d gone through a portal to Brazil.”

Jade is a hoarder of precisely two things: computers and plants. She giggles and hands you a strawberry plant; it, too, goes into the back seat. It seems you are adopting three of her botanical children today. Now if you could only get her to start tossing out her old computers…

While part of you notices that Jade is perhaps more jittery than usual during this visit, you push that thought aside. So what if she keeps glancing to the tomatoes? So what if her garden is so impeccably pest-free it’s almost unnatural? Jade loves her garden, and she’s very good at gardening. That’s all there is to it.

 

* * *

 

 

The Universe is big, infinitely big. There are infinite stars and infinite planets. Intelligent life is comparatively rare, and yet all-too-common.

Stephen Hawking once suggested that humanity “lay low” so as not to attract the attention of Space Columbus and his raping, pillaging, Space-Smallpox-carrying crew. Did humanity listen? Fuck no.

People should always listen to Stephen Hawking. You don’t understand how anyone can think otherwise. Your copy of A Brief History of Time sits on The Shelf, home to your prized possessions. Its dog-eared self rests next to bugs in amber, dead things in jars, and the old cast-off shell of a Carapacian’s hand. This last one was donated to you from the specimen codenamed “The Mayor”, who is currently the mascot of NASA’s “Look, Aliens Are Nice!” campaign, and of whom you are in charge of “keeping” as if he were an animal in a zoo.

Conversations with your alien bro mostly consist of expressive flailing and shrugs. He has “yes” and “no” and “what the fuck?!?” down pat. Some of the other Carapacians have managed to learn enough English to communicate with their handlers, and the stuff they’ve said, if it’s true… Well, humanity is probably doomed.

It seems Hawking was right. (Duh, of course he was?) Most alien civilizations out there are bloodthirsty conquerors. It’s sheer luck that Earth’s first brush with intelligent extraterrestrial life took the form of the refugee Carapacians in NASA’s custody and not their violent pursuers.

An invasion is coming. It will be here soon, if it hasn’t already arrived.

You know all of this. You know that any newly discovered extraterrestrials are to be detained by the government for scientific study. They are all potential threats, even if they’re as cute as the Mayor. And yet…

A brown caterpillar with a cute gray baby face peeks out at you from the strawberry patch. You almost mistook it for a woolly bear and had to do a double take when you noticed the black fuzz was located only on its head. It squeaks and drops the half-eaten slug that had been in its mouth, freezing in place when it sees your approach. You brush aside some of the leaves to get a better look, and that’s when it starts to furiously inch away into the foliage.

No way are you letting it get away! You pluck up the strange creature between thumb and forefinger, expecting to get a few bites or stings.

The skin is velvety in your hands. Nothing happens. There’s no pain, only squirming.

And then… crying?

Yup, those are definitely alien caterpillar tears. Its lower lip is quivering. The little larval invader is -hic- shutting its eyes and preparing to be eaten.

Protocol states you should kill it or contain it, but you do neither. You set it back down on the strawberry plant.

“Easy, little guy, I won’t hurt you.”

 

* * *

 

 

There are a few possibilities you can come up with for the presence of the insectivorous alien defender of your seventh floor berry patch. One: an alien egg dropped from outer space and landed on your balcony. Two: the invasion hit elsewhere, a bird ingested the egg somehow, and defecated it onto your balcony. Three: Jade’s garden is infested with aliens.

You are leaning toward option three. Her garden is suspiciously free of pests, as is yours.

As are a lot of other people’s.

Yeah, you’ve seen the garden forum posts. These guys are everywhere now. They’re all anyone’s talking about when you go to work. Your superiors are having a mild freak-out. Such a sudden, widespread invasion… of tiny cute things? If the authorities start raiding people’s gardens, it’ll cause a panic. But on the other hand, no one will believe it if they say the cutie caterpillars are dangerous. Heck, you’re one of the authorities, and even _you_ don’t believe they’re dangerous.

It’s best to keep your mouth shut, your – as Roxy would say – pips zuippered.

Your zuipper-pipped self brings an old boombox onto the balcony and plays nursery rhyme remixes to your baby caterpillar-thing. He starts bobbing his head as he chows down on garden pests.

Days pass, the nursery rhyme tapes turn into actual music tapes. Nights pass, Woolly Bear nods along when you mumble at him, learning to understand human speech at an alarming rate. You scribble down your findings like a good xenolinguist and bring him cubes of boiled chicken breast.

The strawberries are an everbearing variety, which means they bear fruit twice a year. The spring crop has passed, and the plants are flowering again in preparation for the late summer crop. Birds will descend upon your balcony once more. You’ll have to shoo those fuckers off your territory with chili water and that tacky fake owl.

Prepared though you are, there’s usually at least one crow too stupid to leave your berries alone, and this time you also have an alien larva to protect.

“Hey Woolly Bear, c’mere.”

He scoots out from under a leafy blanket. “Squeak?”

“I know you’ve been doing a good job protecting the berries...”

“Squeak!” He puffs up in pride.

“Right. But birds, man. The crows are coming. Once these sweet, juicy motherfuckers turn red, they’ll be on us. There’s a hole in the bottom of the screen door – see that? Run inside if the birds are after you.”

Woolly Bear nods. You hold out your fist for a bump; he meets it with his entire forehead.

 

* * *

 

 

There are birds surrounding your balcony; you can see it from all the way down the street. You rush to park your car and run inside only to find that the elevators are out of order. Shit.

“My, Mr. Strider, have you put out a bird feeder? What sort of seed mix are you using to get these kinds of results?” asks kindly Mrs. Jones.

“Dunno. Excuse me, ma’am, I’ve got some strawberries to save.”

You rush up the stairs, all seven floors up, and burst into your apartment. The balcony door slides open with a bang. Birds scatter everywhere.

“Woolly Bear!” you cry out. You don’t even care that it makes you sound like a total douche.

“...Squeak?”

You hear a tiny squeak coming from… the top of a crow. Woolly Bear is riding a crow. He chitters to his new bird friend, and the crow comes hopping up toward you. The strawberry patch is completely intact, too.

Fuck.

This alien has mind control.

And he’s still cute.

 

* * *

 

 

The Carapacians know all about “trolls”. They’re apparently a race of “little garden friends” who fancy themselves fearsome space invaders. Indeed, many of them do have terrible psychic powers that would make conquering larger species a possibility if it weren’t for this one inconvenient fact: they imprint on _any_ species that raises them, and they never raise their own young.

Woolly Bear’s Beast Master powers are on your side now. Booyah.

NASA has rounded up a bunch of laser-shooting rainbow caterpillars for study (and of course to keep out of the hands of would-be world conquerors). Now you have official governmental approval to mumble at them and record your linguistic findings.

You feel guilty for keeping Woolly Bear’s existence a secret, like you’re somehow betraying the spirit of Stephen Hawking, but, well… He’s a sensitive Space Caterpillar, and he’s sort of… yours?

The Mayor pats you on the shoulder. He points to the troll babies zooming through the air, then makes soothing stroking motions along your arms. He knows what’s up, and he supports you. God bless the Mayor.

 

* * *

 

 

You visit Jade later at night than a gentleman should call on a lady. Your first words are “I’m here on business,” which irks her even more.

She doesn’t say anything until she actually, honest-to-god serves you slug fritters. “Serves you right.” And then she glares at you until you eat one. Chewy. Kinda gross. Mollusk-tasting. 3/10, would eat during a famine.

“I’m doing a study on trolls,” you try again. “You know, the extraterrestrial garden invaders. We have some in the lab, and they learn languages so quickly it’s– it’s amazing. But that’s in a controlled environment. What I’m doing now is gathering speech samples from the field for comparison, so I need to find participants.”

“And…?”

“C’mon Jade, I know you have a troll. Your garden is infested. At least one must have stuck around after pupation.”

“ _Excuse_ you, my garden is _not_ infested!”

“I’m not going to kidnap it, I just want a speech sample!”

“Stop insisting I have a troll!”

“You do though, and I have proof.”

“Oooh, you make me so mad sometimes. How would you know? Have you been _spying_ on me? Honestly, I thought you were different from the other government thugs, Dave!”

“I’m not spying on you, I swear. Just hear me out.”

Jade crosses her arms stubbornly, daring you to play your trump card. Well, if that’s the way it’s gonna be…

You cup your hands to your mouth and shout. “Tav, come on out!”

He rides up to you on a squirrel, the ridiculously large horns he’d gained at pupation bouncing side to side with the bumpy ride. Tavros’ squirrel mount clambers up to your shoulders where the troll stops to wave to Jade. “Hello,” he says politely.

“He hitched a ride on the strawberries,” you explain.

“So… he came from my garden?”

“Yup.”

Jade’s hair starts moving on its own. A lump forms, and then a tiny alien head pops out, shaking away the long strands of her hair.

“FUCK!”

You always knew Jade had a sailor’s mouth when no one was looking. You grin and ready your recorder. “Damn, this is going to be the best speech sample ever.”

Jade rolls her eyes. “Wait ‘til you meet Jane’s.”


End file.
